CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Sam Ngaruiya. The Ministry of Education (MoE) with technical support from RTI International are collaborating with four county governments to pilot the Tayari ECDE programme. The objective of Tayari is to develop a cost- effective, scalable, low-cost and quality ECDE model. To maximize the impact of Tayari, the MoE intends to scale-up Tayari. However, the ability to take-up and sustain Tayari rests on the counties’ capacity to ensure a viable ECDE system and meet the critical cost of the model. The ability of the counties to take on a Tayari-type programme requires ample institutional, systemic, organizational and fiscal capacity of the counties to take-up and sustain the model. MoE statistics show that, whereas, access has improved, the quality is affected by non-provision of curriculum-aligned instructional materials in the counties and unclear policy in hiring and continuous professional development of the ECDE officers and teachers. Equally, there are policies at the national level that can be used as guidelines for implementation and management of ECD, but there are still some gaps in policy guidelines for implementation; a study mapping the four Tayari counties and three additional counties found increased investment in ECD infrastructure by the governments This presentation explores how the umbrella policy from the MOE as well as evidence from the Tayari pilot programme’s longitudinal study has informed practice within the four Tayari counties, enabling them to be more responsive to the dynamic policy environment. It also showcases initiatives put in place by the counties to sustain the Tayari implementation in pilot counties.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Katherine Merseth and Manar Shukri. The Minister of Education has requested that USAID Early Grades Reading and mathematics Project (RAMP) assist the Ministry of Education (MoE) to assess the overall KG situation in Jordan and to develop recommendations for how the Government of Jordan can expand quality kindergarten (specifically, the second year of kindergarten, or KG2) to serve all 5year old children by 2025. In response to the need, RAMP is conducting a study of KG2 with the objective of enabling the MoE to equitably expand and improve KG2.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Matthew Jukes. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been used increasingly in an effort to reduce uncertainty and improve rigour of impact estimates. However, RCTs do not provide certainty in other important aspects of the evaluation, such as its external validity and in understanding which components of a complex program are essential for its effectiveness. This paper reviews two additional approaches which are currently underutilized which may help researchers and policy makers make better use of uncertain evidence.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Amber Gove and Helen Jang. The Early Grade Reading Barometer offers a wealth of actionable Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) data to help to change the lives of young children. With 40 datasets from 19 places, the Barometer supports data transparency. The Barometer is designed for USAID education officers, policy makers, education staff in host countries, implementation partners, education researchers, and practitioners. It is designed primarily for users who may have limited knowledge about early grade reading, and no or little sophisticated statistical knowledge. This presentation was an interactive demonstration of the Barometer, highlighting the vast amount of data available to the public and how the information can be used to improve learning outcomes.

While the SDGs now officially call for global reporting on learning outcomes, many institutions and scholars had noticed, at least since the mid-2000s, that many children were not learning much, and were starting to respond by, as a first step, advocating and developing assessments that, they felt, was perhaps more appropriate to learning at the bottom of the pyramid, or at the left end of the cognitive distribution. The GMR sounded a clarion with their estimate that there are some 250 million children in the world hardly learning. This paper addresses an issue that can be put simply but is extremely hard to answer: “Is the array of assessments emerging helping researchers, policy-makers, and implementers get a more accurate sense of how much or how little the poorest children in the world know, and is it helpful in remediating the situation?” The paper specifically is not addressed at the question of global reporting—although it does touch upon the issue. The problem of interest here is what is most useful for countries to generate movement along the bottom of the pyramid.

This is a list of select peer-reviewed publications by International Education staff between 2015 and 2018. For some of the publications, links to information about the documents and related resources can be found on this websiate. Where possible, the DOI has been included in the attached brief.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for education represent a major departure from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - at least if educational leaders act seriously in their pursuit - in at least two important respects. First, the goals now pertain to learning outcomes. Second, there is a great deal of focus on inequality in the SDGs. Taking note of this new dual emphasis of the SDGs, this paper assembles the largest database of learning outcomes inequality data that we know of, and explores key issues related to the measurement of inequality in learning outcomes, with a view to helping countries and international agencies come to grips with the key dimensions and features of this inequality. Two issues in particular are explored. First, whether, as countries improve their average cognitive performance (as measured by international learning assessments) from the lowest to middling levels, they typically reduce cognitive skill inequality or, more importantly perhaps, whether they reduce absolute lack of skills. Second, whether most of cognitive skills inequality is between or within countries. In dealing with these measurement issues, the paper also explores the degree to which measures of cognitive skills are “proper” cardinal variables lending themselves to generalizations from the field of income and wealth distribution—the field for which many measures of inequality and its decomposition were first applied. To do this, we look into whether using the item response theory (IRT) test scores of programmes such as TIMSS influence these types of findings, relative to the use of the underlying and more intuitive classical test scores. Patterns emerging from the classical scores are far less conclusive than those of the IRT scores, in part due to the greater ability of the IRT scores to discriminate between pupils at the bottom end of the performance spectrum. An important contribution of the paper is to examine the sensitivity of standard measures of inequality to different sets of test scores. The sensitivity is high, and the conclusion is that meaningful comparisons between test score inequality and, for instance, income inequality are not possible, at least not using the currently available toolbox of inequality statistics. Finally, the paper explores the practical use of school-level statistics from the test data to inform strategies for reducing inequalities.

As a result of Universal Primary Education (UPE) and reform efforts, primary school enrollment in Uganda doubled from 2.9 million in 1995 to 5.8 million by 1998. By 2016, enrollment had reached 8.3 million. Although enrollment gains have been dramatic, the completion rate has stalled for at least a decade, with only about 60% of learners completing primary school. RTI International conducted research that suggests this is due to problems that begin in the first few grades of primary school (and earlier). Primary 1 (P1) repetition is partially attributed to lack of access to early childhood educational opportunities. This brief summarizes these and other key findings of the research, “Repetition of Primary 1 and Pre-Primary Education in Uganda,” published in 2017.

n roughly thirty-five to forty countries that are expanding education very quickly, experts have noticed that learning problems originating in the earliest grades are showing as a massive over-enrolment. In Grade 1, it is not unheard of for ratios of enrolment to population of appropriate age to be as high as 150 percent. This problem is not typical of upper-middle or high-income countries, where the issue has been resolved. Nor, does it seem to affect the very poorest countries where massive enrolment expansions have not yet taken place, and so “don’t even have the problem yet.” Instead, the typical countries showing over-enrolment tend to be those that have received a great deal of funding and attention from development agencies and have expanded enrolment quickly in the last decade or two. This piece looks at the evidence of the enrolment bulge starting in Grade 1. It shows there is a set of inter-related problems occuring, including the lack of "Teaching at the Right Level," that is leading to high enrolment figures, but low levels of learning. The Insight concludes by stating that given the inefficiency signified by the foundation-years over-enrolment, “Teaching at the Right Level” could be an investment that, if tied to proper accountability measures, could essentially pay for itself, and lead to improved foundations for learning in the later grades, and (meaningful) completion of primary school.

This background paper was written for the RISE Program. This paper was written to contribute to the discussio of how RISE approaches the challenge of research into systems change. Drawing on years of experience and research dealing with the complexities of education reform to consider how to link changes in system-level capacity to appreciable improvements in learning outcomes. It also describes a basic notion of how a system adds value to schools, namely by performing three bare-bones functions: • Setting expectations for the outcomes of education • Monitoring and holding schools accountable for meeting those expectations • Intervening to support the students and schools that are struggling, and holding the system accountable for delivering that support